Author Archives: JC Torres

This Wireless Mouse Splits in Half to Reveal a Hidden Game Controller

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Most people who game on a PC own two things that do roughly the same job at different times: a mouse for the desk and a gamepad for the couch. They live side by side, occasionally getting in each other’s way, and neither one is going anywhere. Pixelpaw Labs, a hardware startup from Bangalore, India, thinks that arrangement is wasteful and has built something to prove it.

The Phase is a wireless mouse that physically separates down the middle into two independent halves. Snapped together, it sits on a desk and works like a normal mouse. Pull it apart, and each half reveals a joystick, triggers, a D-pad on the left side, and face buttons on the right, a split gamepad that was hiding in plain sight the whole time.

Designer: Pixelpaw Labs

That missing scroll wheel is not an oversight. Fitting a traditional wheel in the center of the body would have made the split mechanism impossible, so Pixelpaw replaced it with a capacitive touch strip along the top of the left button. Flicking a finger across it scrolls through documents and web pages, with a glide feature that lets the momentum coast rather than stop abruptly. It’s a trade-off that works around a real geometric constraint.

As a mouse, the Phase is competitive on paper. A 16,000 DPI optical sensor pairs with a 1,000 Hz polling rate when connected via the included 2.4 GHz USB dongle. Bluetooth LE is available for convenience and multi-device pairing across up to three devices, though the polling rate drops to 125 Hz in that mode, a gap that matters in fast-paced PC games.

Up to 18 customizable buttons are mappable through the Pixelplay companion app, and a Layer button doubles each button’s function capacity without adding physical complexity. Battery life is rated at 72 hours per charge over USB-C, which is more than enough to outlast dedicated gaming sessions on either side of its personality.

The controller halves use mechanical tactile switches, which is more than most mobile gaming clip-ons bother with. Pixelpaw also has an accessory called the Phasegrip, a bracket that holds the two separated halves apart with a smartphone mounted in the center, turning the setup into a handheld console for mobile gaming. The Phase works across PC, Android, iOS, iPadOS, and ChromeOS, so switching between devices doesn’t require swapping hardware.

Everything shown so far is pre-production, and the company has been upfront that the final surface finish will differ. That’s a meaningful caveat for a product whose physical fit and feel will determine whether the concept actually holds up. Whether they’ll be able to deliver this Holy Grail of PC gaming, however, is the real question that can only be answered in time.

The post This Wireless Mouse Splits in Half to Reveal a Hidden Game Controller first appeared on Yanko Design.

Spigen Turned Apple’s Iconic Beige Mouse Into an AirPods Pro 3 Case

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There’s something quietly odd about the era when Apple products were beige. Not bad, just odd. The Macintosh 128K, the boxy rectangular mouse, the Apple Lisa; they were made from a warm off-white plastic that aged into something stranger, a color that collectors now call “Pantone 453 approximately.” Spigen, a brand that usually channels its energy into clear polycarbonate shells, has decided this particular slice of computing history deserves a second life on your keychain.

The Classic LS AirPods Pro 3 case is the latest piece of Spigen’s retro-Mac collection, which launched in January 2026 with an iPhone 17 case modeled after the Macintosh 128K and Apple Lisa. The AirPods case takes a narrower reference: the original Apple mouse, that flat, single-button input device that became an icon despite being spectacularly simple. It joins a phone strap and a MagFit wallet styled as a floppy disk reader, completing a four-piece set.

Designer: Spigen

The case borrows the mouse’s proportions, its warm stone-colored plastic, and its most tactile feature. Spigen built a “Push to Unlock” locking mechanism into the front, positioned where the mouse button would have been. Press it and the hinged lid releases; snap it shut, and it clicks back into place. It’s a small mechanical gesture, but it makes opening and closing feel deliberate rather than accidental.

That security matters more than it sounds. For anyone who has found a lidless AirPods case rattling loose at the bottom of a bag, the locking mechanism is a genuine practical improvement over standard cases. The AirPods don’t pop out unexpectedly, and the lid doesn’t spring open on its own. An adhesive strip inside connects the lid to the top of the AirPods case, so the whole assembly opens cleanly as one unit.

The shell itself is polycarbonate, reinforced with what Spigen calls Air Cushion Technology, an internal structure designed to absorb impact at the corners and edges. The case wraps the AirPods Pro 3 charging case completely, with a cutout at the bottom for USB-C wired charging and a clear path through the back for wireless charging. Both work without removing the case.

A braided lanyard comes included, threading through a loop on the side. This isn’t just a piece of decoration, as small charging cases have a remarkable talent for disappearing into coat pockets and bags, and a physical tether is a more reliable retrieval system than searching by feel. The Classic LS case retails for $44.99, which places it comfortably in the broader collection alongside the $40 MagFit wallet and well below the $60 iPhone case that started it all.

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This Concept Shoe Looks Like a Sports Car Melted Onto Your Foot

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Car brands dabble in lifestyle merchandise all the time, and most of it follows a predictable formula: slap a logo on a jacket, maybe a watch, and call it brand extension. Footwear collaborations exist, too, but they rarely go further than embroidering a grille badge onto an existing sneaker. This Alfa Romeo-inspired concept shoe takes a different approach, asking what happens when automotive design is treated not as decoration but as a structural principle.

The answer turns out to look a bit like a futuristic slipper, which is either its most interesting quality or its most confounding one, depending on your expectations. The upper is a soft, seamless white shell that pulls over the foot more like a sock than a traditional shoe, with almost no visible fastenings, stitching, or hardware. That minimal surface exists to let the midsole do all the work visually, and the midsole is doing quite a lot.

Designer: Haamed Ansari

That red base is the conceptual core of the whole project. Rendered in high-gloss red, it wraps from heel to toe in a continuous form that borrows the surface logic of automotive body panels, where lines are load-bearing transitions between volumes, not decorative additions. A single glossy band sweeps diagonally across the lateral side before tapering into the toe, much like a racing stripe that has been folded into three-dimensional geometry.

Where the red midsole meets the white upper, a narrow grey seam line functions almost like a panel gap. Car designers use exactly this kind of negative space to separate body sections and give each component its own visual weight. Without it, the shoe would read as a simple two-tone colorblock. With it, the shoe looks assembled from distinct parts that happen to meet with precision, which is a different thing entirely and a far more considered one.

Seen head-on, the silhouette edges surprisingly close to a Japanese tabi shoe, the way the upper pulls cleanly away from a defined sole structure and wraps the foot rather than lacing or strapping around it. The proportions are quite different, but the underlying logic feels shared. Where the tabi’s separation is rooted in traditional craft and function, this concept’s version is purely formal, a visual argument about soft material against rigid geometry.

The ideation sketches make clear that the final form is a significant restraint from where the concept began. Earlier iterations pushed into armored, aggressive territory with angular protrusions and forms that read more like racing boots from a science fiction film. The decision to pare that down into something closer to a loafer-boot hybrid is either a maturation of the idea or a softening of it, and whether that calm reads as confidence or compromise is the question the final render quietly leaves open.

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This Blue Light Toothbrush Whitens Teeth 2.7x Brighter in 14 Days

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Most bathroom counters tell a story of good intentions. There’s the electric toothbrush, the whitening strips half-squeezed out of their foil, maybe a tray or a pen that got used twice before disappearing behind the moisturizer. Whitening has always been a separate ritual, something you commit to on top of brushing, which is exactly why most people don’t stick with it. The Bixdo W60 is built around a simpler idea: that the best whitening routine is the one you’re already doing.

The W60 is a sonic electric toothbrush with a built-in 460 nm blue-light whitening system, designed to whiten and clean in a single three-minute session. No trays, no strips, no extra step to talk yourself out of skipping. It’s the kind of consolidation that sounds obvious once someone makes it, but actually took real engineering to pull off.

Designer: Bixdo

Getting stable light output from a toothbrush handle all the way to a tooth surface is not straightforward. Bixdo solved it with a patented energy-delivery system paired with Perlon® filaments, a fiber type chosen for how well it transmits light. These route the 460nm output directly where it needs to go, while separate Tynex® filaments handle the cleaning. One brush head, two jobs running at the same time.

The whitening agent is PAP, or phthalimidoperoxycaproic acid, a peroxide-free compound that breaks down stain molecules without the free radicals that cause sensitivity. It’s gentle enough for daily use, which matters because the whole point is building it into a habit rather than rationing it out once a week. The 460nm blue light activates the PAP in Bixdo’s Active Oxygen Whitening Toothpaste directly at the enamel surface, with the two working together to speed up stain breakdown. Third-party testing across 32 participants found up to 2.7 times brighter-looking teeth in 14 days using the brush with Bixdo’s Active Oxygen Whitening Toothpaste.

The rest of the package is well put together. Four brushing modes cover most situations: WHITEN+ for the full session, FAST for a quick two-minute morning clean, DEEP for a thorough three-minute scrub, and SOFT for sensitive days. A handle display gives real-time brushing guidance, and the base flashes orange if you’re moving too quickly between quadrants. Battery life is up to 180 days on a single charge, which is a pleasant surprise for this category, and a one-touch travel lock stops it from switching on inside a bag.

The W60’s real argument is a behavioral one. Whitening works when it happens consistently, and consistency is much easier when it’s attached to something you’re already doing every day. Brushing is the existing habit, and the W60 is designed to fold into it rather than sit beside it as another thing to remember. The blue light, the PAP chemistry, the smart brushing feedback, none of it requires a separate session, a separate product, or a separate place on the bathroom counter. They all just come along for the ride.

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This Jellyfish-Inspired Lamp Transforms When You Switch It On

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Table lamps have a fairly narrow brief: sit on a surface, produce light, and try not to embarrass themselves in the process. Most manage two out of three. The Aurelia table luminaire takes a more considered approach, drawing from the slow, hypnotic movement of jellyfish to build something that works as a light source and as an object worth looking at when it’s switched off.

The reference point is specific, not from a general impression of the ocean, but from the particular way jellyfish tentacles move: slow, layered, and almost meditative in repetition. That quality informs the lamp’s layered construction and the dense organic lattice etched across its translucent shade. The pattern reads quietly in a lit room. Switch the lamp on and the whole surface activates, casting warm amber light through the texture in a way that feels atmospheric rather than task-driven.

Designer: Nizamuddin N.S

That distinction matters for where the lamp is meant to live. Aurelia isn’t designed to light a workspace, and the designer makes no claim that it should. The design targets bedside tables, desk corners, and living spaces where the goal is to soften the mood of a room rather than sharpen its focus. Diffused light changes the quality of a space in ways that sharp overhead sources simply cannot manage, which is the quiet premise the whole lamp is built around.

The physical form carries that logic through. The shade is a tall, slim panel mounted on a dark rectangular base that reads as wood. Unlit, the lamp is restrained and cool, with the etched lattice surface present but not clamoring for attention. Lit, the object shifts register entirely. Warm amber pushes through the pattern, and the base-to-shade contrast, dark below and luminous above, becomes the lamp’s defining visual move.

Beyond the light itself, Aurelia stands as a small sculptural piece meant to give a room some character. That’s a harder claim than it sounds. Most decorative lamps lean entirely on their shades for visual interest and have nothing to offer in the middle of the afternoon. Aurelia’s etched surface is structured enough to hold attention without illumination, which is the minimum requirement for a lamp that wants to be treated as more than a lamp.

There’s also a practical dimension that the jellyfish reference shouldn’t distract from. A lamp that produces soft, diffused warmth rather than direct output is genuinely useful in spaces that already have overhead lighting covered. It fills a secondary role well: the kind of light you turn on at the end of the day, not the kind you read by, and rooms that lack that option tend to feel unfinished in ways that are hard to articulate.

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Michael Jantzen’s Garden Retreat Has 30 Panels to Rearrange by Hand

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Most garden structures ask one thing of you: sit still and enjoy the shade. A pergola is a pergola, a gazebo is a gazebo, and neither one particularly cares what the afternoon light is doing. Michael Jantzen’s Interactive Garden Pavilion operates on a different premise entirely, one where the occupant has as much say over the structure as the designer did.

Built from sustainably grown stained wood and painted a uniform forest green, the pavilion sits on an octagonal support frame fitted with 30 slatted hinged panels across its walls and roof. Each panel pivots independently, sliding and rotating along the frame before locking into position. Open them wide on a hot afternoon, and the interior breathes. Angle them down against the glare, and the space dims considerably.

Designer: Jantzen

That last point is where the design earns its name. Most adjustable outdoor structures offer a single variable, usually an awning or a retractable canopy, within an otherwise fixed form. Here, the entire skin of the building is the variable. The wall panels, roof panels, and ground-level platform extensions can all be repositioned, which means the pavilion can look substantially different from one afternoon to the next.

Pull the panels shut on three sides, and the structure becomes a genuinely private enclosure. Splay them open, and the interior connects fully to the garden around it. In one arrangement, it reads as a dense closed form. In another, the structure opens up entirely, and the slatted framework becomes almost sculptural against the lawn.

Inside, two benches with adjustable backrests run the length of the interior, facing each other. The seating is built into the frame, which keeps the floor plan clean and leaves room to recline fully. When the overhead panels are partially open, sunlight enters in sharp parallel bands that shift across the benches as the day moves, a quality that is either meditative or distracting depending on what you came in for.

The construction logic is also notably practical. The pavilion is a prefabricated modular system, so the components can be scaled before assembly or joined with additional units to form a larger cluster. No foundation is required in most configurations. Given its size and type, a building permit is unlikely to be needed in many jurisdictions, which removes one of the more tedious barriers between an interesting design and an actual garden.

Jantzen has spent decades proposing architecture that responds dynamically to its occupants, much of it remaining on paper. This pavilion is one of the cases where the idea got built, and the result holds up at close range. The slatted wood is honest about what it is, the green paint ties the structure to the garden without trying to disappear into it, and the hinge mechanism does exactly what it promises.

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LiberNovo Omni Just Won the iF Design Award 2026 for Wellness Design

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Most office chairs operate on a quiet assumption that sitting is something your body should adapt to, not the other way around. You adjust the height, nudge the lumbar support into roughly the right position, and then spend the rest of the day subtly fighting the chair anyway. The ache between your shoulders, the stiffness in your lower back by mid-afternoon, that’s just part of the deal, apparently, and most of us have accepted it without much argument.

LiberNovo decided not to accept it. The result is the Omni, a chair the company calls a Dynamic Ergonomic Chair, and it just picked up the iF DESIGN AWARD 2026 in the Product Design – Beauty/Wellness category. The iF Design Award has been one of the most internationally respected design recognitions since 1954, with this year’s cycle drawing more than 10,000 entries from over 60 countries. That’s a serious field to stand out in

Designer: LiberNovo

Click Here to Buy Now: $929 $1099 (15% off). Hurry, deal ends in 48-hours!

The core idea behind the Omni is that your posture doesn’t stay fixed throughout a workday, so your chair probably shouldn’t either. The Bionic FlexFit Backrest is built around that logic, using 16 spherical pivot points, 8 adaptive flexible panels, and 14 dual-connection points to follow the natural curve of your spine as it shifts. It covers you from the hips up through the shoulders, spreading pressure across the whole back rather than piling it onto one fixed lumbar point.

What makes this work in practice is the Dynamic Support system, which adjusts automatically to changes in your posture without you having to reach for anything. Lean forward during a focused stretch of work, sit back when you’re thinking something through, the chair tracks those shifts, and responds in real time. It’s the kind of feature that sounds modest until you realize how much of your day you’ve spent adjusting a chair that couldn’t do this.

Then there’s OmniStretch, which is where the Omni starts to feel like something genuinely different. Sitting for long hours compresses the lower spine gradually, and most chairs just let that happen. OmniStretch is a guided decompression feature that gently stretches the lower spine during the workday, designed to actively relieve pressure rather than simply tolerate it. It’s probably why the iF jury placed the Omni in the Beauty/Wellness category: this chair isn’t just holding you up, it’s doing a bit of recovery work along the way.

The Omni also offers four recline positions running from 105 to 160 degrees. The shallower end is built for focused, upright work, while the deep 160-degree Spine Flow position is designed for full spinal decompression between sessions. The two intermediate angles cover the range in between, which gives the chair a kind of daily rhythm that matches how most people actually move through their hours rather than sitting rigidly in one position all day.

The chair was developed by LiberNovo’s team in Shenzhen alongside industrial design firm Kairos Innovation, also based there. Winning an iF award is meaningful external confirmation that the design thinking behind the Omni translates beyond the product brief. For a chair that started from the premise that desk work doesn’t have to hurt, that’s a pretty good place to land.

Click Here to Buy Now: $929 $1099 (15% off). Hurry, deal ends in 48-hours!

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Epomaker TH80 V2 & V2 Pro: Wireless Keyboards That Last 200 Hours

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There is a particular kind of frustration that comes with wireless keyboards, and it always arrives at the worst possible moment. Mid-sentence, mid-meeting, mid-game, the low battery warning blinks, the charging cable is nowhere nearby, and the whole appeal of going wireless suddenly feels like a poorly negotiated deal. The TH80 V2 and TH80 V2 Pro from Epomaker were built with that specific frustration in mind.

Both boards share a compact 75% layout, keeping the function row and dedicated arrow keys while shedding the numpad bulk that full-size keyboards carry everywhere. They are available in two switch flavors: the Creamy Jade linears for a smooth, consistent keystroke, and the Sea Salt Silent V2 switches for anyone sharing a space with people who would rather not hear every word being composed out loud.

Designer: Epomaker

Click Here to Buy TH80 V2: $58.65 $68.99 (15% off) | TH80 V2 Pro: $70.20 $77.99 (10% off). Hurry, deal ends in 48-hours!

TH80 V2

Underneath each keystroke is a gasket-mount structure paired with a five-layer sound-dampening system. The polycarbonate plate adds some flex to the mix, and the result is that soft, cushioned thud the keyboard community has taken to calling “creamy.” It is one of those things that sounds like marketing until the first time a finger lands on a well-tuned gasket board, and then it just sounds like a very good reason to keep typing.

The battery is where both boards make their most persuasive argument. The TH80 V2 carries an 8,000 mAh cell rated at 200 hours with the RGB off, and the TH80 V2 Pro steps that up to 10,000 mAh. Most wireless keyboards in this price range ship with cells a quarter that size, which means charging becomes a weekly ritual rather than a distant afterthought. Both boards support 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth, and wired USB-C connectivity, remember up to five paired devices, and switch between Windows, Mac, and Android without any fuss.

TH80 V2 Pro

The TH80 V2 Pro goes a step further with a 1.06-inch glass-covered TFT color screen tucked beside the rotary knob. It shows time, battery percentage, and connection status at a glance, which is genuinely handy. It also supports custom GIF uploads through Epomaker’s browser-based driver, so the screen can carry a small personal detail for anyone who treats their desk as a considered space. No software installation needed, either, which removes a step that should have been dropped from this category a long time ago.

Picking between the two is a fairly straightforward exercise in priorities. The TH80 V2 covers the gasket mount, the massive battery, hot-swappable switches, full per-key RGB, and a side-lighting bar, available in a subtle Black Grey or a composed White Grey Yellow. The TH80 V2 Pro adds the LCD screen, the larger battery, the browser-based driver, and more expressive colorways, including a striking translucent black and a fan-favorite Pink edition.

What the TH80 V2 series gets right is the part that rarely makes it onto spec sheets: the sense that someone thought carefully about what actually makes a wireless keyboard annoying to live with, and then addressed those things one by one. Good typing feel, a battery that lasts long enough to stop being a concern, and enough room for personalization that the board can feel like yours rather than just a peripheral you settled for.

Click Here to Buy TH80 V2: $58.65 $68.99 (15% off) | TH80 V2 Pro: $70.20 $77.99 (10% off). Hurry, deal ends in 48-hours!

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The $599 MacBook Neo is Shaking Up the PC Industry: 6 Best Alternatives

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Apple has never really done “affordable.” For decades, the cheapest way into the Mac ecosystem meant spending at least $999, and that was considered a deal. So when the company announced the MacBook Neo at $599, or $499 for students and educators, the reaction wasn’t just surprise. It was something closer to disbelief. This is the same Apple that charges $19 for a polishing cloth, and it just put a laptop on the shelf for less than most people’s monthly rent.

It’s not an accident or a moment of generosity. The MacBook Neo is a deliberate move into a market segment Apple has ignored for years: the budget laptop buyer. Students, first-time Mac users, families on tighter budgets. These are the people who’ve been defaulting to Chromebooks and cheap Windows machines, not because they preferred them, but because a Mac was simply out of reach. Apple just changed that math, and the PC industry is already scrambling to respond.

Designer: Apple

More Than a Fresh Coat of Paint

The Neo comes in four colors: blush, indigo, silver, and a sharp citrus yellow. The colors even extend to the Magic Keyboard in lighter shades and matching wallpapers, which is a level of cohesion you genuinely don’t see at this price point in Windows hardware. The aluminum enclosure weighs 2.7 pounds, and the 13-inch Liquid Retina display runs at 2408-by-1506 resolution with 500 nits of brightness, outpacing most competing devices in this segment by a considerable margin. Combine that with up to 16 hours of battery life, and the headline specs read like a mid-range laptop, not an entry-level one.

The chip underneath all of that is the A18 Pro, the same processor that powered the iPhone 16 Pro in 2024. That’s where the picture gets a bit more nuanced. It’s definitely more than enough for web browsing, document editing, streaming, casual photo editing, and AI tasks. What it isn’t is a creative workstation. This machine is fanless, silent, and cool-running, but it isn’t going to replace even a MacBook Air for serious video work or sustained heavy computation. Apple has been honest about that positioning, and the spec sheet backs it up.

There are also a few caveats beyond the silicon. There’s no backlit keyboard on the base $599 model, which feels like an odd omission in 2026. Fast charging isn’t supported either, with only a 20W USB-C adapter in the box. The connectivity is minimal: one USB 3 port (USB-C) and one USB 2 port (USB-C), the latter topping out at 480Mb/s, which is slow enough to matter if you regularly move large files. No Thunderbolt. No MagSafe. Touch ID is exclusive to the $699 model. These are deliberate subtractions, not oversights, designed to protect the MacBook Air’s value proposition while keeping the Neo’s cost down.

Road Once Traveled: Windows RT

Before getting too swept up in the novelty of the MacBook Neo, it’s worth remembering that the idea of an affordable, ARM-based portable computer aimed at everyday users isn’t new. Microsoft tried exactly this in 2012 with Windows RT, a version of Windows designed to run on ARM chips and released alongside the original Surface tablet. The pitch was appealing: a sleek, efficient, battery-friendly device that could handle the basics and connect to the broader Windows world.

The fact that it failed is pretty much part of history by now. The core problem wasn’t the hardware or even the concept: it was the software. Windows RT looked and felt like Windows but couldn’t run traditional Windows desktop applications. It was a watered-down experience wearing a familiar face, and users who expected full Windows compatibility found themselves stranded. The app ecosystem didn’t materialize fast enough, either, and Microsoft eventually abandoned the platform. Windows on ARM has continued in various forms since then, but it’s never fully shaken the baggage of that first failed attempt.

Apple, by contrast, spent years laying groundwork before making its ARM leap. When the company transitioned the entire Mac lineup to Apple Silicon starting in 2020, it didn’t ask developers to build for a new platform overnight. The Rosetta 2 translation layer handled legacy Intel apps smoothly from day one, and Apple had spent over a decade pushing developers toward modern APIs and frameworks through iOS. By the time the A18 Pro landed inside a $599 laptop, the software ecosystem was already there waiting for it. The MacBook Neo doesn’t run a restricted version of macOS. It runs full macOS Tahoe, with access to the same App Store and the same apps as any other Mac, and that is the fundamental difference that Microsoft was never able to bridge with Windows RT.

The best alternatives if the MacBook Neo isn’t for you

The MacBook Neo sets a new standard for what a $600 laptop can look and feel like. That said, it’s not the right machine for everyone. If you’re committed to Windows, need more RAM, prefer a larger display, or simply aren’t ready to switch ecosystems, there are some solid alternatives worth considering in the same price range.

Acer Swift Go 14 (SFG14-73)

The Acer Swift Go 14 is one of the more compelling Windows options at this price point, running on an Intel Core Ultra 5 processor with integrated Intel Arc graphics, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. That’s double the storage of the base Neo for roughly the same $600 price. The bigger draw is the display: a 14-inch OLED panel at 2880×1800 resolution, which is genuinely excellent for a laptop in this category and makes the Swift Go a strong pick for anyone who consumes a lot of media.

Designer: Acer

The trade-offs can’t be ignored, though. Battery life comes in around 8.5 hours, which is significantly shorter than the Neo’s 16-hour rating, and it weighs about 2.87 pounds in a larger chassis. It’s also a somewhat older-gen model, and that sweet price tag is only available in select retailers. If you want a bigger, sharper screen and don’t mind carrying a charger more often, the Swift Go earns a serious look.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 (15″, AMD)

Lenovo’s IdeaPad Slim 5 punches above its price with a more generous hardware loadout than the Neo: an AMD Ryzen 5 8540 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage, all available around the $500 price point. Lenovo also tends to make the best keyboards in the budget Windows space, and this one continues that tradition.

Designer: Lenovo

Where it falls short is predictable. The display is a 15-inch 1920×1200 IPS panel, which is perfectly functional but a noticeable step down from the Neo’s Liquid Retina screen in terms of sharpness and color. The battery life is what you’d expect from a Windows laptop. It won’t make you smile when you pull it out of a bag the way the Neo will, but if raw specs-per-dollar is the priority, the IdeaPad Slim 3 is a difficult machine to argue against.

HP OmniBook 5 (BA1056NR)

HP’s OmniBook 5 positions itself as an entry-level everyday laptop with pricing that frequently dips below $650, giving it a clear edge over the Neo in pure cost. It runs on modest Intel hardware, comes with a generous serving of 16GB of RAM, and is built primarily for email, web browsing, document editing, and video calls, the exact workload profile Apple says the Neo is designed for. Battery life is rated respectably, and the keyboard and trackpad are comfortable enough for extended daily use.

Designer: HP

The honest version of this recommendation comes with a caveat: the OmniBook 5 doesn’t compete with the Neo on display quality, build materials, or software longevity. The screen is a standard 16-inch 1080p IPS panel in a plastic chassis, and it runs Windows on Intel Core 5 silicon, which is a much older generation than today’s selection. It makes sense as a pure budget play if the price tag is still a stretch, but going in with eyes open about what those savings cost you is important.

Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 (CP714-1H-54UB)

The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 is one of the more capable Chromebooks available around the $530 mark with a discount ($699 in full), and it brings a feature the Neo completely lacks: a touchscreen. Running on an Intel Core Ultra 5 with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, it matches the Neo’s base memory and storage configuration while adding 2-in-1 convertibility and a 14-inch IPS display at 1920×1200. For students, especially, the tent and tablet modes open up use cases that a standard clamshell laptop can’t cover.

Designer: Acer

The limitations are ChromeOS itself, which has narrowed the gap with full desktop operating systems considerably but still trails macOS and Windows for professional app compatibility. Battery life is advertised to be around 10 hours, shorter than the Neo but solid for a school day. At 3.21 lbs, it’s heavier and physically larger, and the display is a step behind the Neo in resolution and color quality. For someone already in the Google ecosystem, though, this is the sharpest Chromebook rival to the Neo in this price window.

Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 (ChromeOS)

Lenovo’s Chromebook Plus 14 is the premium option in the ChromeOS space, and its headline feature is the display: a 14-inch 1920×1200 OLED panel with touchscreen support at a price of $749. For a Chromebook, that’s genuinely unusual hardware, and the screen quality puts it ahead of most of the Windows competition in this tier. It also supports Wi-Fi 7, runs on an Arm-based MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 chip with 16GB of RAM, and offers a build quality noticeably above the typical Chromebook standard.

Designer: Lenovo

The case for it over the Neo comes down to ecosystem preference. If Google Docs, YouTube, and Android apps cover your workflow, the Chromebook Plus 14 delivers a premium screen and a refined experience for less money than a MacBook Air. If you need desktop-class software, the ceiling becomes apparent quickly. ChromeOS has matured, but it still hits walls that macOS doesn’t. This is the Chromebook that makes you reconsider the category, not the one that makes you forget its limitations entirely.

Refurbished MacBook Air M1

It feels slightly odd to list an older Mac as an alternative to a newer Mac, but the refurbished MacBook Air M1 is worth the mention. Available through Apple’s certified refurbished store, third-party retailers, and resellers, the M1 Air frequently surfaces in the $600 to $700 range and represents a considerable step up from the Neo in several areas. The M1 chip is more capable than the A18 Pro for sustained workloads, it has MagSafe-era USB-C with Thunderbolt support, and it comes with 8 to 16GB of unified memory in the base configuration with a more mature, battle-tested macOS optimization story.

The catch is that you’re buying hardware from 2020, and Apple’s software support timeline means the M1 will eventually age out of macOS updates before a Neo purchased today will. For someone who wants macOS and a bit more headroom without stepping up to the $1,099 MacBook Air M5, the refurbished M1 is a pragmatic option rather than an inspired one. It gets the job done, but it doesn’t have the new colors, and the MacBook Neo, despite its compromises, is the more forward-looking machine.

Wake-up call

Affordable Windows laptops and Chromebooks have never been in short supply. The problem has always been that most of them require accepting significant compromises: dim displays, plastic chassis that creak, battery life that barely lasts a workday, or chips so underpowered that the experience degrades within a year of purchase. Many of the more appealing options in this segment come from lesser-known manufacturers, which brings its own concerns around software support and build reliability over time.

What the MacBook Neo does is reframe the question the PC industry has been comfortable not asking. ARM-based Windows laptops have existed for years, and the Snapdragon X series has made genuine progress, but Windows on ARM still hasn’t found the cultural moment that would turn it into a mainstream category. The Neo’s arrival and the reaction to it suggest that the market for a well-made, genuinely affordable computer aimed at students and everyday users is larger than the industry has been willing to address seriously. Apple just walked in and asked whether cheap and simple was enough, or whether those buyers might actually want something better.

The post The $599 MacBook Neo is Shaking Up the PC Industry: 6 Best Alternatives first appeared on Yanko Design.

Apple Finally Rounded the MacBook’s Corners After 18 Years

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For about 18 years, every aluminum MacBook has looked more or less the same. Silver. Angular. Quietly serious. There’s nothing wrong with that. Apple’s unibody aluminum design, introduced in October 2008 and carved from a single block of metal, was genuinely elegant and set the template for an entire industry. But it also retired something along the way: the idea that a Mac laptop could feel chosen rather than just defaulted to.

The MacBook Neo, announced March 4 and starting at just $599, is the first real crack in that template. It comes in four colors (blush, indigo, silver, and a yellow-green called citrus) with enclosure corners that are noticeably softer than any aluminum Mac in recent memory. Whether that adds up to a proper design statement or just smart positioning is worth thinking through.

Designer: Apple

What happened to Apple’s color confidence

iBook G3 Clamshell (courtesy of Wikipedia)

Apple’s fondness for color didn’t always live inside an iPhone. The iBook G3, launched in 1999, came in tangerine and blueberry, and later in indigo and key lime. It was rounded, slightly toy-like, and completely unapologetic about being a consumer product. When the aluminum unibody arrived in 2008, Apple traded that warmth for precision machining and sharp rectilinear edges. Right call for the MacBook Pro. Default for everything else, apparently, for nearly two decades.

The result was a color drought in aluminum Mac laptops that has lasted until now. Silver, space gray, midnight, starlight: all variations on the same mood of professional restraint. The Neo’s citrus and blush aren’t just options on a spec page. They’re a quiet admission that not every laptop buyer wants a device that looks like it belongs in a boardroom. For Apple, that’s actually not a small thing to say at the product level.

Two different stories about corners

M1 MacBook Pro (2021)

There’s a distinction worth making here, because “rounded corners” gets used loosely when describing the Neo. MacBook displays have had rounded screen corners since 2021, which is a display-level detail and nothing new. What’s different on the Neo is the chassis itself. The physical aluminum enclosure is softer at the edges and corners than any aluminum Mac before it, and Apple’s own press materials describe “soft, rounded corners” specifically in terms of how the device feels to hold and carry.

That’s a real shift in the design language. The 2008 unibody was celebrated for machined sharpness, corners you could feel were engineered. The Neo softens that deliberately. It’s not a revival of the iBook, and it’s not trying to be, but the instinct is similar: a consumer Mac that feels a little more like it belongs to you. The notch is also gone, making this the first notchless MacBook since 2020, which quietly tidies up the one thing that made recent Airs feel slightly unfinished.

The repairability angle is actually a design story too

One thing that got a little buried under the color conversation: the Neo is the most repairable Mac laptop in years, and that’s partly a design decision worth noting. Teardowns showed how the whole machine was disassembled in just a few minutes using standard Torx screws throughout. No tape, no adhesive, anywhere inside. That’s a first for a modern Mac. The USB-C ports, speakers, and headphone jack are all modular. The keyboard can be replaced on its own, without swapping the entire top case, which on the MacBook Air currently costs over $370 in parts.

The internal simplicity isn’t accidental. The A18 Pro chip runs so efficiently that the Neo needs no fan at all, which removes a whole layer of thermal engineering that usually clutters a laptop’s interior. The result is a cleaner, more logical internal layout. Whether Apple arrived here from genuine design philosophy or from regulatory pressure (the EU’s right-to-repair push has been building for years) is an open question, but the outcome is real either way.

What it doesn’t fix, and what might come next

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, of course. The base model has 8GB of non-upgradable RAM, one USB-C port runs at USB 2.0 speeds, and there’s no backlit keyboard. These are calculated trade-offs for the price point, not mistakes, but they matter depending on what you actually need the machine for. And repairability, for all the justified enthusiasm, is still partial: the RAM and storage are fixed at purchase, just like every other current Mac.

Still, the Neo feels like Apple designing for a specific person it had previously ignored: someone who was never going to spend $1,000 on a MacBook Air and wasn’t particularly well served by anything else Apple made. The color, the softer form, the price, the clean internals, all of it points at the same person. What’s genuinely interesting is whether any of this travels upmarket. If a future MacBook Air gets a color story this confident, the Neo might end up looking less like an entry-level product and more like Apple quietly figuring out what comes next.

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